Tasty and terrific with vegan vanilla ermine frosting

The Bakehouse team has unveiled a newly created vegan chocolate cake! That’s right—lots of flavor and verifiably vegan!

Ermine frosting may be new to most 21st-century Americans, but its origins go back to the 1880s, when it was also known variously as “milk frosting” or “boiled milk frosting.” It was made as frosting for the then-popular mahogany cake that later came to be called red velvet cake. The frosting is basically made by starting with a flour-based roux—it would typically be made with butter and flour cooked together, but for this vegan cake we’re using oat milk. The chocolatiness comes from cocoa powder crafted by the Dutch firm of Bensdorp, one of the first in the world to make cocoa powder. The vanilla is the real deal—from the island of Madagascar.

The results are terrific! Great any way you like to eat your cake—alongside an AeroPress-brewed cup of the January Roaster’s Pick at the Coffee Company, the marvelous Mexican Chiapas. Or enjoy it with a cup of great tea, like the Milk Oolong (which, vegans rest assured, has no milk in it), that we have at the Deli. Be sure to serve your cake at room temperature to get the full flavor!

Also available as cupcakes

P.S. If you’re looking for other vegan desserts, try the terrific Chocolate Millet Muffins we make at the Bakehouse and the Italy Meets San Fran dessert platter at the Roadhouse—fresh fruit, warm Better Than San Francisco sourdough bread, and the terrific Noccioliva hazelnut and dark chocolate spread.

Great to eat, no meat, and handmade on the island of Evia

Looking for a lovely confection that’s well suited to the summer heat? I’m happy to report we have a fantastic new arrival from Greece that will fill the bill beautifully! Made to do well in the very hot Aegean climate, dried fig salami is super tasty!

We get them from longtime friend and importer, Vivianna Karamanis at Hellenic Imports. Everything we get from Vivianna is very, very good and these dried fig salami are up there with my favorites. Here’s a bit of the backstory:

My husband Theo loves figs and whenever he was visiting me in the U.S. he would always buy fig cakes, but he really didn’t enjoy the quality or firmness of the product. He would go on and on about the quality of dried Greek figs, specifically from the island of Evia. Upon heading back to Greece, he started researching the local fig farms and their products from Evia. He met with a lady who was making fig salamis by hand with her partner. We worked closely with them, but with a twist. Instead of just a pack of dried figs, we made them into these great salamis.

The woman who works with the figs is based in a small facility in Athens. She controls everything from beginning to end, meaning she visits the farms/farmers on the island and checks the harvest, she works with very specific producers, and it has helped as they commit their harvest to her—many Greek farmers feel most comfortable working that way. She handles the production and oversees the packaging. Despite how popular the product has become for us she still insists on doing most of the product using traditional methods.

We only use figs from the island of Evia which I believe is the key ingredient to the “juiciness and sweetness” of this product. Only simple, raw ingredients are used to make the product making it a high-fiber, healthy snack. There are no added sugars or salts and they are certified by the Non-GMO Project. It makes for the ideal cheese companion.

Evia is the second largest island in Greece, as Vivianna says, “just a bridge away” from Athens. It lies off the country’s east coast, in the Aegean Sea. The figs come from various farms, but they are all grown in and around the town of Kymi on the central east coast of the island. Evia has a long history and has, at various points, been ruled by Athens, the Roman Empire, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and more! Since early in the 15th century, there has been a sizable Albanian population.

We have four of these fantastic, dried fig salami on hand. All are great. The Aleppo pepper with orange is probably my favorite but they’re all fine! Each has a touch of sweetness and a bit of spice and all are excellent!

• Cinnamon + Pistachios
• Aleppo Pepper + Orange Zest
• Almonds + Black Pepper
• Aleppo Pepper + Smoked Paprika

I love them on their own, and they’re beyond terrific on cheese boards—I’ve yet to find a cheese they don’t pair well with. A nice little gift, a great addition to your provisioning for a camping trip, something special to keep on the counter for late-night nibbling, and a wonderful sweet to serve while trying to channel the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers during consensus-seeking meetings.

 Snag this fig salami

On one hand, I’m not a classically trained chef. On the other hand, being nerdy comes pretty naturally for me, so I get inspired and research a lot. That the research requires lots of eating, exploring and reading just makes it that much more of a joy.

One of the major inspirations for Miss Kim’s menu is Korean Buddhist cuisine. There are so many tenets of Korean Buddhist cuisine that speak to me, like creating as little waste as possible, or that you should cook with so much love and care, as a parent cooks for a child. Being lucky enough to have a mom who cooked everything from scratch even after working 14 hour days, I really feel that I know what food made with love and care tastes like.

I am always delighted to find a common thread in historic dishes, which I also study, and today’s Buddhist dishes. Sansho pepper was more prevalent than black peppercorn in historic cuisine, for instance, and now you see almost exclusively in Buddhist cuisine.

Another tenet is that you cook with very local, seasonal ingredients. That one is a really great one. Cooking with local ingredients in-season is a hallmark for any traditional cuisine, right? And it really is a foundation Miss Kim is built on. I research traditional Korean dishes, then I ask myself what these dishes would look like if Michigan was a region in Korea. I go out to the Kerrytown Farmers’ Market every week and pick up vegetables in season. Braving the weather to see my favorite farmers and chatting with them, and picking up beautiful vegetables in season, even in the middle of winter, is one of very best parts of my job. This tenet makes me feel confident that if my grandmother or a great Korean Buddhist nun had lived in Michigan they wouldn’t hesitate to use beets from Ann Arbor Seed Company or Goetz Farm, even though beets are not native to Korea. It is native to where we live.

Living in Michigan through long winter months also makes me appreciate cooking with a bit of limitation. Not only is Korean Buddhist cuisine vegan (completely free of any ingredients produced by animals), it also prohibits the use of most of vegetables in the allium family, such as garlic, spring onion, garlic chives, wild chives, and asafoetida (a sort of herb similar to leeks in aroma), along with onions. These vegetables are thought to induce too much passion and are therefore not suitable for meditation. This one is a hard for me, as I love all those pungent things, but putting up such boundaries can make you think outside of the box and find unusual ways to make things delicious—and Korean Buddhist cuisine is famously delicious.

One of the Buddhist dishes that really shines in spite of these limitations is also one of the simplest to make: Silken Tofu and Herbs in Vegetable Broth. The depth of flavor for such a simple dish is surprising, especially if you have labored many hours making vegetable broth. It is soothing and complex and warm, bursting with freshness from the herbs and aromatic oil. This recipe is based on Wookwan Sunim’s recipe, one of the most well known Buddhist nun-chefs in Korea.

Buddhist Silken Tofu Soup

Make the vegetable stock:
  1 gallon water
  5 pieces dried shiitake mushrooms
1 cup diced Korean moo radish or daikon radish
6-inch piece dashima or kombu seaweed

Put water, mushrooms and radishes into a pot and bring to boil.

Simmer for about 30 minutes.

Add dashima seaweed into the pot and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Strain and cool the vegetable stock until needed.

Make soup broth:
  3 cups vegetable stock
  1 ¼ cups silken tofu
  ½ teaspoon sea salt
  1 teaspoon soy sauce

Put the vegetable stock in a pot and bring to boil. Add sea salt and soy sauce.

Using a spoon, add silken tofu to the pot. The smaller the tofu pieces, the better.

Bring the broth back to boil, then take it off the stove.

Put in a soup bowl.

Garnish and enjoy!
  1 oz chopped fresh cilantro
  1 tablespoon perilla oil (can be found at Korean grocery stores, may substitute sesame or other aromatic oils)

I have to confess that I often play fast and loose with this recipe, throwing in whichever vegetable ends and peels I have around, including some of the forbidden vegetables like leeks and green onions. I figured it helps to eliminate waste. Feel free to do the same—it will be delicious, warm and soothing, and may even be passion inducing. Isn’t that what we all really need for the Michigan winter?

Ji Hye Kim
Chef and Managing Partner
Miss Kim Korean Restaurant